Good Legs, Bad Luck

Hey Everyone (Jake),

The title of the post should have you saying "uh-oh" and shifting in your seat at the surely uncomfortable tales in store. Well, I've been wanting to have an uncomfortable conversation with you for a while, so here goes.

We'll start with Cherry Blossom where I had a super ride. Preface: the last few years, I've started riding in February or March thanks to my 'successes' as a swimmer at Whitman. While becoming the 9th best all time 200-yard backstroker at a small, middle-of-the-pack DIII swim program was nice, it also meant that I developed bigger guns than Kennett!

Note that my former swim trunks are my current recovery tights, as seen in this recent photo:

These backstroking guns meant that I climbed like a fat kid on the bike. Climbs I have been dropped on include the small hill before the big hill at Elkhorn day 1, the small hill before the big hill at Elkhorn day 3, and the small hill at the Gig Harbor Circuit Race (no big hill available). This is just a small sampling, but suffice it to say that if you can get dropped on a hill, I probably got dropped on it. Well finally I stopped swimming, and instituted a type of trickle-down economics, whereby my arm muscle trickled down to my legs.

Metamorphosis complete, I signed up for a bunch of races with small and medium size hills in them. First, I didn't suck at a hill climb at San Dimas. Then I didn't suck on the hill in the road race! I was bulging with optimistic juices as I headed to Hood River for Cherry Blossom with Steve, who also stopped climbing like a fat kid. My big breakthrough was Sunday's Orchard Run Circuit Race, a real "slobberknocker," I'd been told. Steve was a fancy boy and got in the early break, which turned into the leaders group when things a'sploded on the last lap, while me and Logan Owen hung out and made selections. Fully expecting to wind up in no-man's land at some point during the race, I focused on digging real deep on the big paved climb and the long gravel section each lap to stay with the GC group, until at some point I realized there were only 12 of us left. I was so brazen at noticing this that I think I told Morgan Schmitt that he was a pussy if he couldn't drop me. Well on the last lap, he drop me. I drooled and stared at my front hub for a while and wound up 13th on the day, 9th overall. Very happy.

(things a'splode!)

(where's my blossoms?)

(I was wheat-fed and gravel-trained in Walla Walla for 5 years.)

Cherry blossom capped off a good block of training, so I settled down for some R&R before Walla Walla. Now that you're all happy for me, here's what's happened since:

April 9: Volunteer Park - Crashed on Ian Crane and led him out as apology
April 10: Olympic Valley RR - Crashed out!

April 15: Walla Walla - Good...
April 16: Walla Walla - ...Better...
April 17: Walla Walla - Mystery Stomach Flu!!

April 30: Eugene Roubaix - Wait...why do you guys race your bikes?
May 1: Vance Creek - Srsly, flatted out of the break?

May 7: Ravensdale - Mystery Stomach Flu!

It hurts cause all those races, I felt like I could pick up my legs with my hands and use them as baseball bats, but sickness and bad luck got in the way. I guess the silver lining is that it's nice that bad luck is the limiter, and not bad legs. Still, I'm all itchy and want to make like Krogg.